Good Real Food

I wanted to try a fruit crisp that did not use as much sugar and butter and cornstarch as many recipes I have found call for. This was an experiment, but I think it turned out well. The cherries are naturally sweet on their own and the oil and honey and oats along with some almonds make a nice crispy crust. The hardest part of making this was pitting the pound of cherries, but it was well worth it!
What to do:
-Pit and halve a pound of fresh cherries
-combine in a bowl: 3/4 cup rolled oats, 1 tbsp flour, 2 tbsp honey, 2 tbsp vegetable oil, salt, 1/2 cup chopped almonds, cinnemon, and nutmeg
-place pitted cherries in the bottom of a deep pie dish, spoon the oat mixture over the top and bake for about 40 minutes. Cool and serve with vanilla ice cream.

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Not actually all that original, chopping up squash and cooking it with chopped up basil but I was goofing around with the food processor and I made a slurry of onions, garlic and basil. And a hot pepper. And then I dumped it on cubed squashes and remembered to add salt and pepper and a decent amount of olive oil before I put it in the oven (350) for half an hour.  I used young squash, small ones, not baseball bat zukes and patty pans the size of frisbees. I think the bigger they get, the more they need to be cooked down.

I tossed (I didn’t toss. I stirred.) it with whole wheat couscous, which, since I always have to look this up since I buy bulk grains all the time, I cook 2c boiling water to 1c couscous. Simmer until the water is absorbed or let it sit for half an hour. Add a little salt and some olive oil at the end.

<h3>Meanwhile</h3>

My friend J-Ro made me dinner the other night. He’s a master of eating his whole CSA share alone, so dinner included a green salad with cucumber, broccoli with garlic and sausage (local, free roaming animals. I’m still kind of half veg, half flexitarian, which I think means “not veg” to some people.) brown rice, and a second vegetable side which he made thusly:

Steam some potatoes and matchsticked beets a little. I think the potatoes were in there because we got two or three young potatoes last week. They were nice but not key to the project. Rinse a can of garbanzos, chop an onion, and start it cooking in some oil. Add the beans and beets and potatoes and a handful of raisins and some chopped mint and a good amount of fennel foliage (because we’ve all got fennel growing and it produces a lot of foliage. Move the whole mess to a bowl and stir in a little cider vinegar.

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I was lucky to have time to make it up to Grand Marais on the North Shore of Lake Superior last week while out checking in on some of my summer interns. I had lunch at the Angry Trout, a local restaurant specializing in fresh local fish. I sat outside in the sun, the lake breeze and the view of sailboats exiting the harbor made me sigh deeply and smile, feet up on the chair in front of me. And just when it could not get any better, I was brought a cold local beer, and a fresh green salad with grated carrots and beets, fresh grilled trout, and this amazing tomato basil salad dressing. It was so good that I was done before I thought to take a picture. I asked if they would give me the recipe for the salad dressing and two minutes later my waitress handed me a little slip of paper with the following written on it:
Tomato Basil
-2 cups chopped tomato
-3 Tbs extra virgin olive oil
-3 Tbs. red wine vinegar
-2 Tbs. chopped fresh basil
-pinch o salt-

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I only recently figured out that a person could, if they wanted, just soak bulgur overnight and never heat it at all. I’m a master of forcing legumes on myself by setting them out to soak in the morning which means I can’t laze out and not cook them into food when I get home. I left our bulgur soaking thusly overnight, with only half a mind to what I was going to do with it, mostly thinking “aw crap. we’ve got a crust and a half of bread which is not going to make lunch for both of us tomorrow.”

In the morning it had soaked up its water and I just put it in tupperware with cucumber, tomato, one hard boiled egg for each of us, sliced, some cubed up jack cheese because it was there and some lettuce. (which, despite my upbringing in a house where there was always washed lettuce in the fridge, except while we were washing it, I only recently started washing right away and storing in a ready to use sort of state).

I think the trick (the trick besides soaking) was to just dress the bulgur. I love pomegranate molasses, Vivian hipped me to it years ago while she was gathering provisions in NYC in preparation for her move to law school someplace in Ohio where she wasn’t sure there’d be an arab grocery. With balsamic and olive oil it makes a lovely dressing, especially for grain-type salads. Sometimes I add sumac, oregano and thyme, sometimes I forget. This time I forgot. So I just dressed the bulgur and then dumped everything else in and put the lettuce at the very top (actually N. arranged the sliced eggs artfully on top, but the idea was to keep the lettuce mostly up off the dressing so that it wouldn’t be all wilted by lunch time).

I do have a question for youse, though. A few, actually. Starting with, are you still eating out of plastic containers? We’ve got a few of these clear rubbermaid containers that comfortably hold about as much grain salad or leftovers as an adult person needs for lunch. They stay closed and don’t leak and generally rock, but they are plastic. I’m just curious about the rest of you. What do you pack your food in?

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I’ll probably accidentally write this again before summer is over but nothing goes better than fresh zucchini and fresh mint. Good thing since both are more prolific than anyone really wants them to be. Hot iron skillet, onions, garlic, patience, patience, sliced squash, patience, salt and pepper, patience, lots of chopped mint and just a little more patience.

We had it with romano and tortellini this week, but it goes nicely with tofu and rice, too.

We cooked it to softness but you can leave out some of the patience and have a fresher squash and a fresher mint and call it salad. Maybe with bulgur or kasha and a bit of feta.

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Scrambled eggs have a publicity problem. They are taken for granted to be boring, hurried, week day morning affairs with two eggs tossed together in the pan with nothing to keep them company. Or, they are the cold slabs of congealed bland eggs we often find in buffet lines as we scan ahead for the baked goods, or (please please!) the fresh crab legs. Today I am on a mission to put the scrambled egg dish back at the center of the weekend brunch. Forget the pancakes…who wants to be standing over a hot stove flipping those little buggars all morning and then feel their heaviness in the heat of the afternoon?

Eggs are the most versatile of all foods, and they go well with almost anything, so you can really use them to highlight seasonal vegetables and herbs and to try out different spice combinations. The trick to really good scrambled eggs is to, first, use the very best fresh local eggs possible. Second, you want to cook them over low heat, patiently moving them around the pan with a spatula as they cook. The rest is all about getting creative with what you put in them. The scramble I made this morning highlighted what is available right now in our garden and locally, so lots of basil, zucchini, tomatoes, chives, spring onions, and garlic scapes. Inspired by Simon Hopkinson, I also added fried bread cubes at the end.

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if you haven’t heard the news, my family has recently (like, last week) welcomed a new addition. Our new daughter is doing well, and as we return to somewhat normal, I return to thinking about food. I was lucky - no more than lucky - to have friends who jumped in and organized a week of meals brought to us. It was, hands-down the most wonderful gift anyone could have given us. More that just giving us food, they gave us, and especially me, the precious gift of time - with our new daughter, with each other, time to soak up the energy and excitement that comes with a birth.

And while that energy is still very much here, I’m back on food duty. Which is great, sort of. I’m surprised, more than anything, by how little I actually manage to accomplish in any given day beyond laundry, tidying up, and trying to keep on top of keeping the kitchen tidy. Time for thinking about food hasn’t been front and center.

My saving grace right now? My CSA. Every week, I get a box of stuff that is so good, it barely needs anything done to it. So, recently, we’ve been taking a page from Mark Bittman and doing the minimal cooking route - think lightly sauteed greens tossed with some garlic, cheese, and pasta, or enormous salads with maybe some bread or eggs on the side.

I’m just hoping that we’re a bit more together by the time the CSA box stops. In December.

I think I’ve got time.

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